Here’s something that’s a little different from my usual stuff, for Christmas this year I wanted to make a cute lil’ guy for my brother. He’s been collecting some of my printing experiments that are usually failures, putting them on display. Typically these are pumpkins, monsters, mutants. At his request, I agreed to do something cute and cheerful for the holiday. Something intentional and not just another printing error.
To start, I sculpted this little guy in ZBrush with a quick Polypaint pass to get an idea of how it will look. I then spent some time slicing him up, keying the parts, and getting him supported for print.
Of course, then came the errors. I was honestly suprised because I’ve been printing a ton with no problem! Come to find out, the resin tray had a micro-leak, resulting in resin gradually pooling underneath the tray and curing. Creating these gnarly wounds in the first batch of Reindeer!
Eventually, I decided to stop playing around and went with the “flexible” tough resin. pictured below. This stuff stinks, but it sure is reliable.
Painting began, pretty basic with the airbrush and hand painting the snow on the antlers, no masking yet.
Eventually I busted out the masking tape. I know there are better options out there, but at the time all I had was this blue construction tape. It still did the job!
The final shots of this lil’ Reindeer -
I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!
- Kurt